Help: Literature containing walls and isolation

I am a seventh grade teacher at a progressive school in Queens, NY, and I am looking for some suggestions/help. After coming across a lesson on the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame's website comparing Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall" and Pink Floyd's The Wall, I developed the unit to include a number of original ideas and assignments. The unit is slowly becoming my own, and I have become attached to it as one would a child. The over-arching theme question is, "How do we isolate ourselves as human beings?" The last addition was Jean-Paul Sartre's short story, "The Wall". Now that I will be teaching the unit for a third time, I want to continue to expand the unit. This is where I ask you for help/suggestions.

Can anyone suggest a poem or short story that deals with a wall? I've used the wall as a symbol of isolation, mental or physical. What other works contain a wall that can be seen as an agent of separation?

Oops. I should have scrolled all the way down to the bottom of the page before I posted this; this belongs in the teaching section.

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Originally Posted by BFrank

I am a seventh grade teacher at a progressive school in Queens, NY, and I am looking for some suggestions/help. After coming across a lesson on the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame's website comparing Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall" and Pink Floyd's The Wall, I developed the unit to include a number of original ideas and assignments. The unit is slowly becoming my own, and I have become attached to it as one would a child. The over-arching theme question is, "How do we isolate ourselves as human beings?" The last addition was Jean-Paul Sartre's short story, "The Wall". Now that I will be teaching the unit for a third time, I want to continue to expand the unit. This is where I ask you for help/suggestions.

Can anyone suggest a poem or short story that deals with a wall? I've used the wall as a symbol of isolation, mental or physical. What other works contain a wall that can be seen as an agent of separation?

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BFrank: I am not sure how multi-cultural you wish to make your lesson plan, but there is a poignant short story entitled "Drought", by Jan Rabie, in The Penguin Book of Southern African Stories, edited by Stephen Gray, 1985 edition ISBN 0-14-007239-X, which may fit your theme.

It is a very short piece, under 2500 words most likely, about a white Afrikaan *Baas* who walls himself off from the black man who partners with him to build a house. It is highly metaphorical, and written before the end of state sanctioned aparteid, of course. No foul language, and may or may not work for 7th grade.

I hope it might prove useful.

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Originally Posted by Jozanny

BFrank: I am not sure how multi-cultural you wish to make your lesson plan, but there is a poignant short story entitled "Drought", by Jan Rabie, in The Penguin Book of Southern African Stories, edited by Stephen Gray, 1985 edition ISBN 0-14-007239-X, which may fit your theme.

It is a very short piece, under 2500 words most likely, about a white Afrikaan *Baas* who walls himself off from the black man who partners with him to build a house. It is highly metaphorical, and written before the end of state sanctioned aparteid, of course. No foul language, and may or may not work for 7th grade.

I hope it might prove useful.

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Thanks, sounds like it will be perfect. I will check it out this weekend.

Two obvious ones that come to mind are "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "The Mark on the Wall" by Virginia Woolf. Two good short stories about walls and isolation.

Try out Jorge Luis Borges's House of Asterion. He lives in a labyrinth but those walls are not exactly the cause of separation, but it is the comparassion that helps out to see the human on Asterion. (It can be found in any edition of Borges's short stories or Ficciones)

There's also a wall in The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe.

It might be more of a high school level story, but I couldn't help but think of Flowers for Algernon.

"...an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall."

I was reminded of Melville's Bartleby and his 'dead-wall reveries' while reading the OP. You might consider that one.

EDIT: Actually, for seventh grade, maybe not...

"The Yellow Wallpaper" jumps to mind for me. Here's a website with a nice discussion on the theme of "Freedom and Confinement" (obviously concerning the wall) in the short story:

http://www.shmoop.com/themes/literat...wallpaper.html

Sorry if this is too late to be helpful.

Illiad and the Odyssey. No they are not short stories but you might work with the concept of the Trojans defending the walls of Troy. The devious means in which one might penetrate "a wall" resulting in dire consequences.

Simon and Garfunkel's "I Am a Rock".

The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe, also deals with a wall. I'm not sure if the story would suit your age-group though.

One of my favourite poems might fit. It's by Stevie Smith. I have some of it by heart, maybe it's enough for you to find it...

Anger's Freeing Power

I had a dream three walls stood up wherein a raven bird
Against the walls did beat himself and was this not absurd?

For sun and rain beat in that room that had its fourth wall free
And daily blew the summer shower and the rain came presently

...

Rise up! Rise up! my raven bird, fly by the open wall -
You make a prison of a place that is not one at all.

...

[the bird gets angry and beats down the wall to free himself]

Yet when I woke my eyes were wet
To think Love had not freed my pet,

Anger it was that won him hence
As only anger taught him sense.

Often my tears fall in a shower
Because of Anger's freeing power.


Can't remember the missing bits. Hope I quoted enough to make you want to read it!

That line 'You make a prison of a place that is not one at all' is so resonant. l always think, yes, I do that. It's so sad but true that only in anger and violence do we escape our selfmade prisons, when sometimes all we'd need to do is to look around, turn and walk free.